Ice Rink Slated For Downtown

EAST HARTFORD — The town may not be skating through construction at the barren redevelopment site downtown, but townspeople can soon expect to skate there.

C. Roger Moss, director of the parks and recreation department, plans to buy a portable ice-skating rink for Redevelopment Area 2. The redevelopment agency -- the owner of the empty property -- voted Monday night to lease a portion of it to the town for one dollar for 120 days.

``We want to try to get it up as soon as it's cold,'' Moss said of the rink Thursday.

The Porta-Rink will be roughly in the middle of the property. It will consist of plastic lining stretched into a rectangle with a border of PVC piping, and will be 100-feet by 125-feet.

Unlike the new rink at Bushnell Park in Hartford, the rink will not have a refrigeration system, and will not be available for use until the temperature drops considerably from its recent balmy levels. And it will be B.Y.O.S. -- Bring Your Own Skates.

The town also plans to buy a miniature Zamboni-like ice-clearing machine that would be pulled by a tractor, dubbed ``the Bambini.'' The cost for both the rink and the machine will be less than $5,000, Moss said.

The idea behind the rink is to attract people to the property, he said. Every building on the property, which spans the western side of Main Street from Governor Street to Connecticut Boulevard, has been razed as part of a $6 million redevelopment project.

Such projects don't happen overnight, so Moss expects the temporary rink may be around for a while. When the time comes, the rink can easily be moved somewhere else, such as Martin Park, he said.

And there are other uses for Porta-Rink: In warmer weather it can be used as a volleyball court.